


Ground Zero

by Elvaron



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 22:28:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elvaron/pseuds/Elvaron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For one of ana's prompts for the Bujold Ficathon 2012: Captain Vorpatril's Alliance category. As the summary alone would contain spoilers for CVA, please check the author's notes for the summary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ground Zero

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [ana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ana/pseuds/ana) in the [Bujold_Ficathon_2012_CVA](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Bujold_Ficathon_2012_CVA) collection. 



> For ana's prompt: A reaction/account from someone inside ImpSec HQ when it starts sinking. _"Vorberg, did the building just shake?"_

"Vorberg, did the building just shake?"

Lieutenant Peter Vorberg, one-time courier and recently transferred to analyst duty in the bowels of Imperial Security Headquarters, looked up blearily from his bank of commconsole screens.

In the next cubicle, Captain Korvic was looking thoughtfully at the ceiling. Why the _ceiling_ , Peter wondered, then reminded himself that he wasn't in space any more, and ground level was actually _above_ them right now.

"Didn't feel anything, sir," he said, and wondered if it was supposed to be some subtle test. Poke the new analyst to see whether he could tell when his superior officer was lying through his teeth. It would be just the kind of thing that ImpSec would do, right up there with cutting your legs off.

...Ok, that was unfair. It had been that bunch of mercenary clowns who had been responsible for that. And in some ways he supposed that it was that entire string of unfortunate events that had led to him spending more time in HQ while recovering from _having his legs chopped off_ , which had led to Korvic picking up on his analytical skills, which had led to this transfer, which was supposed to be a step up from courier duty. Pretty big 'supposed', right there. Analysts were definitely more respected than couriers, who were looked upon as little more than glorified errand runners, or, if they were someone's someone ( _see Vorkosigan, Miles_ ), white horses who'd landed a cushy job of being able to run around the galaxy on the Imperium's budget. And, if this entire thing with the Arquas – Peter's current assignment and royal (Jacksonian royalty, that was) pain in the butt – worked out, he was pretty sure that Chief Allegre would finally approve his promotion to Captain.

So, supposedly, it had all turned out rather well for him. Except for the part where he'd failed to realise that analysts were promoted faster than everyone else because they put in about three times the number of hours at work that everyone else did, in an average day. Nevermind having a life, analysts apparently didn't sleep, or eat, or survive on anything other than a diet of data and coffee.

Speaking of coffee... Peter reached for his mug. Empty _again._ The dried dregs at the bottom of his mug (extra large, ImpSec Vorbarr Sultana standard issue), seemed to mock him.

"I thought I did," Lieutenant Vortorren piped up from the cubicle on Peter's left. Peter blinked, wondering what on earth he was talking about, before he recalled the threads of the conversation. Oh yes, shaking buildings.

"There hasn't been any tectonic activity in this region for the last four million years, at least if the geologists know their stuff," he replied. "I'm making a coffee run. Want any, sir?" This last to Korvic. It always paid to be helpful to your superior officers.

"Yeah." Korvic held out his mug (extra extra large, ImpSec Vorbarr Sultana custom issue). "Black, four sugars."

Peter grabbed his mug and Korvic's and stood. His back cracked. Damn uncomfortable HQ chairs. He made a mental note to get round to getting one of those ergonomic ones that Korvic had, or better still, one of those massage chairs that Chief Allegre was rumoured to have. "Vortorren?"

"Naw, I'll pass," Vortorren said. "My stomach's giving up the goat from too much acid."

"That's what the antacids are there for, kid," Korvic said, his attention already back on his screens.

"Right," Peter said, and took himself off to the pantry. One day, ImpSec would get round to piping coffee right to its analysts' desks, so that they didn't have to waste time walking around for it, but in the meantime, he was going to enjoy this chance to stretch his legs. Since they weren't actually chopped off right now.

No, he wasn't in the _least_ traumatised by that incident, thank-you-very-much.

He'd just negotiated the coffee dispenser (helpfully labelled "Strength: Morning, Post-lunch, Post-dinner, and I'm-not-getting-any-sleep-tonight-either" – he picked the last, of course – it was 4am in the morning, the last he'd checked) when he thought he felt the floor sway, very gently.

"Huh," he said. He stood still for a moment, but it didn't repeat itself.

Dismissing it, he strode back to his cubicle and handed Korvic his mug.

"Any luck with your research?" Korvic asked.

Peter made a face. "I'm still running through all those Escobarran manifests. You won't believe what a mess they're in--"

"I think the floor just swayed again," Vortorren said.

They paused. Three pairs of ImpSec eyes turned on the ceiling.

"I think I feel it too," Peter said.

"I don't," Korvic replied, and took a large mouthful of coffee. "Ah. Bliss in a cup."

"No, it's definitely there," Vortorren said.

"The ImpSec building can't be swaying," Peter replied.

Korvic frowned. "Wait, I think I felt something." Spinning back to his console, he entered a few commands. "There's no report of seismic activity in the region. Hm, there's a report coming up – apparently there was a blast nearby, some unexploded ordnance going off."

"So that was what we felt?" Vortorren asked.

"No, that was an hour or so ago. Couldn't be." Korvic tapped his finger against his keyboard, a thoughtful look on his face. Analyst's mind at work, please stand by...

"Whatever it is, it seems to have stopped," Peter supplied. "You know, we're probably just _tired_. It's like when you get off a jumpship after too many jumps and you think _everything's_ swaying."

"That's called being jump sick," Korvic shot back. "Anyway, back to work. I'm actually banking on being able to go home and shower today."

Ah, ImpSec. The building could be burning down around them and their biggest concern would be - _am I going to lose all my work?_ Shaking his head, Peter turned back to his console and pulled up another manifest.

On his desk, the coffee in his mug moved, then very slowly, sloshed out the side of his cup.

"Uh—" Peter said.

"Oh for _fuck's sake_ ," Korvic snapped, rising to his feet. _His_ back didn't crack, lucky bastard. "Isn't it bad enough that we're stuck trying to figure out what a bunch of dispossessed Barons and Baronettes are doing, without having to deal with the bloody building shaking as well?"

Peter wisely kept his mouth shut. Getting in between a senior analyst and the possibility of going home on a bad day was a sure way to get killed. Or worse.

Korvic hit a button on his office comm. There was no sound, not even a dial tone. "Comm's down," he muttered. "What the heck is going on?"

Peter checked his. No words lit up the LCD. "Mine too."

"And mine," Vortorren added.

Korvic sighed noisily. "Right. At least the network's still up. You two stay here, I'm going upstairs to find out what the hell is going on."

"Yes sir," Peter and Vortorren chorused.

Korvic stormed out. Peter exchanged looks with his fellow analyst.

"I think I feel it again," Vortorren said.

"It's definitely swaying," Peter replied, mopping up the coffee on his desk and gulping down half the cup to avoid a repeat incident. On his desk, a paperweight started drifting, very slowly, towards the right. "Say, it's not so much swaying as sort of … going sideways right now, right? I'm not imagining it?"

Anything was possible, when you hadn't slept in as long as they had, but--

"I think you're right," Vortorren said cautiously. "Well, I'm sure the captain will figure it out. I'd better finish crunching these numbers." His voice died down, replaced by the sound of frantic typing. Peter sighed and looked at his screen again.

A box of paperclips started moving. Peter watched in fascination for a moment as it slid to the side of his cubicle, slowly at first, then gradually faster. "You know..."

"I _know_ ," Vortorren said, sounding peeved. "But Korvic will have my head if I don't get these to him within the next hour or so."

The floor tilted suddenly, and much more sharply. More coffee sloshed out of Peter's cup. Vortorren scowled, muttered a curse under his breath and wedged his chair's legs against the side of his cubicle so that it would stop rolling.

Peter glanced over at him, and wondered if he should be following Vortorren's example. The other Lieutenant had been at HQ far longer than he had, and there were rumours that the higher-ups all had an eye on him as potential high command.

The floor seemed to level out. Then, judging from the coffee level in his mug, started slanting the other way.

Ok, maybe he wasn't cut out for an analyst's job, because right now, all his instincts were screaming at him to _run away, quickly_. "Hey--" he said to Vortorren. "I think I'm getting out of here."

"Are you crazy?" Vortorren said. "If we don't finish this before 9am tomorrow, heads are going to roll. And there hasn't been an official evac order yet, so it can't be that bad."

"Yeah," Peter said, very slowly, "But you know, when you're onboard ship and you smell smoke, you don't really wait for the smoke alarms to go off before you _run like hell_..."

Vortorren spared a moment to give him an incredulous look. "Well, it's your funeral when the captain comes back and finds you're gone. In case you'd forgotten, we're not in space."

Peter paused, wrestling with doubts. True, the floor slanting didn't seem very severe at all, and power was still up, and there wasn't any sign of panic – a few of the other analysts had gotten up to check what was going on, but the rest of them were still staring furiously at their screens, occasionally muttering curses at the disruption.

There was a _bump_ and the floor felt like it dropped three inches. That was enough for Peter to make up his mind. Grabbing his jacket from off the back of his chair, and his staff pass, he waved to Vortorren. "I think I'm clocking out."

"Your choice," Vortorren replied, not budging an inch.

Trying to look nonchalant about it, Peter forced himself to walk to the door, swiping himself out. Once he hit the corridor, he ran like the Dendarii mercenaries themselves were after him.

 

One good thing about having your legs chopped off – if it could be said to be a _good_ thing – was that you never stopped appreciating them after that. And that in turn meant that Peter spent a healthy amount of time at the gym, if only to make sure that he could run away in a hurry the next time a crazy merc in a suit came after him.

All that training served him well when the building started tipping more rapidly, and a corridor that should have been flat suddenly became an uphill climb. He dashed past the elevators, hit the button, noted that they were out of order, and decided that taking them was a bad idea, in any event. Hurling himself into the stairwell, he latched onto the railing as the building swayed and rocked as though it was a ship in a solar storm. "No tectonic activity my ass," he muttered. "Those geologists have it all wrong..."

There were a few other ImpSec officers trying to make their way up the stairs, but there were surprisingly few of them, given the circumstances. Peter had imagined there would be a stampede. But, like Vortorren had said, there hadn't been an official evacuation order...

He dashed up, passing a portly Colonel – what was he doing, hanging around so late, anyway? - and a few wheezing Captains and Majors, and broke out onto the ground floor.

Except that it wasn't the ground floor any longer. The ImpSec building had no windows, but the side doors were made of glass, and while it was still the middle of the night out there, one should have been able to see the street outside.

There wasn't any sign of the street right now. There was just pitch darkness outside, as though the entire building had been uprooted and planted into the abyss.

There was also a lot of yelling. The chaos that had been absent on the lower floors was in full swing here, uniformed officers and non-coms dashing back and forth, some of them hauling papers and boxes and even one carrying his entire commconsole. Peter grabbed hold of him. "What's going on?" he asked. He had to shout to be heard over the clamour of voices.

"Don't know! Building's sinking! Gotta head up to the roof!" the other yelled back.

" _Sinking?_ " Peter said, trying to imagine what it had to look like, and failing spectacularly. Then his survival instincts, which had been _screaming_ for a while now, kicked in hard, and he found himself joining the mad rush for the roof.

It seemed like the longest run he'd ever taken, even counting the more spectacular moments of his courier days. The building shuddered, the floor moved unevenly and unexpectedly, sending everyone in this mass migration sprawling against the sides of the stairwell and against each other, sardines jostled in a can. Peter nearly lost a silver eye when he fell and something snagged on it - the fabric ripped and the pin came out, and it was only luck that let him catch it before it fell right back down the stairs. His heart nearly stopped, and he thanked all his lucky stars that fate wasn't unkind enough to make him choose between his own life and his silver eyes.

Clinging on to the pin like a good luck charm, he stumbled up the remainder of the stairs, pausing for a moment to help an Ensign to his feet, pausing for another moment as he slipped on loose papers, pausing for yet another moment as the building dropped half a foot, and then – _finally!_ – swung around the last corner and out onto the roof.

The night sky, filled with stars, stretched out over his head. Peter glanced at it, thinking that it seemed so very calm, compared to the madness of the stairwell... then a light flyer screamed overhead, along with several air cars, bringing him sharply back to reality.

The scene on the ground was nothing short of chaotic. There was a _massive hole_ in the park next to the building, and Peter wondered for a moment if the exploded unexploded bomb that Korvic had mentioned had been responsible for that, when he saw a grav tractor pulling away. The area was already cordoned off, and it seemed like the entire municipal guard and half of the Service ground forces were there, along with all of the news crews in Vorbarr Sultana. Another ground car pulled up, and even from his vantage – which he was starting to realise wasn't as high up as it _should_ have been – he recognised the silver and black of Vorbarra livery. The Emperor himself.

"This way!" someone yelled, and he glanced over to realise that some bright spark had helpfully set up rappling harnesses off the side of the building. As he watched, an officer clipped the harness to his belt and leapt neatly off.

Time to get out of here. He spared a moment to wonder if the official order had gone out yet, and whether Vortorren had finally abandoned his commconsole for the exit. He hoped he had.

 

His boots, when they hit the ground, sank nearly all the way to his knees with a massive squelch of mud. With a yell, Peter released the rappling harness and tried to pull himself free before he got sucked right down – why was ImpSec HQ built on quicksand, and why had no one seen fit to mention this minor detail?! - when hands grabbed him and hauled him out. "That way," the ImpSec officer said, gesturing him off to the designated evacuation zone, where a small but growing group of officers were gathering, looking lost and displaced. Peter mumbled his thanks, and stumbled off in that direction, squelching all the way.

He paused on the road to turn and look back. The building really _was_ sinking, and he judged that the first _and_ the second floors were probably below ground by now. At least it wasn't showing any signs of giving way, or breaking, or caving in. As long as it didn't sink _too_ quickly, they probably had a good chance of evacuating everyone. The rest of the contents of the building, however...

 _All those evidence rooms, server rooms, all that work..._ he thought faintly.

"Vorberg," a voice said from behind him, a voice that, after all this time, still made his spine straighten automatically. He gulped, and spun.

Simon Illyan himself stood there, and even as part of him was boggled by the thought that the ex-Chief actually remembered him, the other half of him was frantically searching his soul and trying to decide if he was going to be shot for deserting his post.

"Sir!" He half saluted, stopped, then decided that Captain Illyan would _forever_ be the Chief, and completed the salute anyway.

The ex-Chief gave him a nod. "I see you decided to leave," he said, oh-so-blandly.

He really was going to get shot. This was probably why Vortorren was the model ImpSec analyst, and not him. Desperately, he tried to make peace with his maker. "Yes sir."

The Chief glanced past him at the building, and then back at him. Then, unexpectedly, broke into a smile. "I always knew you had it in you," he said, and clapped him on the shoulder.

Peter was still staring as the Chief walked off.

*

He was visiting Vortorren in hospital (broken leg, nothing serious, and he risked his life to help with the retrieval and removal of critical information, a good man) when Korvic walked in.

"Ah," the captain said, with a sound of satisfaction. "I see you're both here. Good, saves me the trouble of hunting you down."

Vortorren looked up. Peter swallowed, hard.

"You, first," Korvic said to Vortorren, and handed him an envelope. "It's a commendation for risking life and limb in the line of duty, and refusing to abandon your post even while under fire."

Vortorren's face lit up. "Thank you, sir!"

Peter, who knew _all_ about risking life and limb in the line of duty, suppressed a wince at certain memories. That wince leaked out anyway, when Korvic turned on him. "You," Korvic said with a sigh, and shook his head. "What the hell am I supposed to do with you?"

"Uh," Peter said, intelligently. Vortorren was giving him a sympathetic look.

Korvic tossed the other envelope he was holding at him. "So help us all, it seems that you're getting promoted."

He was vaguely aware that his jaw had fallen open. Vortorren's sympathetic look had morphed into shock. "What?" Peter said.

Korvic rolled his eyes. "The official ceremony's next week. You both better make sure you turn up for it – ex-Chief Illyan himself will be handing out the awards." His gaze paused on Peter. "And a little bird tells me that _your_ recommendation came from so high up, it might as well have dropped from orbital height."

Peter, very slowly, shut his mouth. It didn't feel real. Then again, the fact that the ImpSec building had sunk - well, it had stopped sinking by now, but everything below the fourth floor was still underground - didn't feel real either, and it had been a few days. "Thank you, sir."

"Whatever," Korvic sighed. "You're still a Lieutenant until next week, and you _still owe me that analysis on those manifests._ "

He'd completely forgotten. He leapt to his feet, glancing around the hospital room as though it would magically make a commconsole appear. "I'll get started on it right away, it'll-be-on-your-desk-tomorrow," he said, snapping off an analyst's salute and dashing from the room as fast as his legs – happily attached, thank you ImpSec medical – could take him. It wasn't exactly running off into the sunset, but it was good enough for him. At least this time, he wasn't running from a sinking building. 

*

**Author's Note:**

>  _Simon, his teeth pressed into his lower lip, released the stress to say, "At a guess, those would be the fellows who grew up in earthquake country, Guy." And after another minute, under his breath, as the evacuation continued more sporadically, "The ones still inside, you'll want to commend. The ones outside, those are the ones I'd promote…"_ \- CVA


End file.
